How can gas companies have more rights than us?

February 10, 2014

After reading the recent letter to the editor concerning fracking trucks on area roads, I felt compelled to write my own. How did we get to the place where gas companies have more rights than citizens? Somehow we find ourselves inhabiting an Orwellian world where corporations rule and citizens must submit. Even the roads that we depend on to live our daily lives have been taken over.

Most of us will not make any money off these wells, yet we still have to put up with the noise, the pollution, the damage to our roads and public lands, and the peril we face as drivers trying to maneuver around these huge vehicles.

Driving up Ohio 7 to Marietta has become increasingly dangerous. These trucks pull out right in front of me, sometimes two at a time, taking up both lanes. One truck had some kind of liquid pouring out of it, leaving a wet track as long as I kept up with it.

And fracking trucks are only one part of the picture. At one place there is some kind of greasy sludge coating the highway that goes on for half a mile. The trucks that come out of this place must be leaking, and just think about where this stuff goes when it rains. At two other places where they have huge storage tanks, there is almost always a strong smell of gas. Is this safe? Does anyone care?

If we as citizens don't speak out and take action this will only get worse, and the environment that sustains us will reach a point where it is irreversibly defiled.

We are turning into a third world country thanks to the congressional Republicans and their undue obeisance to the rich. Heck, they are the rich. Deregulation is their holy grail, and they won't be satisfied until every corporation is allowed to pollute as much as they please. It is to that end that they demonize the EPA and work to weaken it in congress.

They want a world where corporations make the rules, one where our precious earth is plundered and used as a dump. This is their idea of America and they will do everything in their power to bring this about.

By the way, if you want to see what that kind of world will look like, just take a little trip over the river to where King Coal holds sway. West Virginia. Otherwise known as Paradise Lost.